1. A Note on How Prior Survey Experience With Self-Administered Panel Surveys Affects Attrition in Different Modes
- Author
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Jessica Daikeler and Tobias Gummer
- Subjects
education ,Online-Befragung ,Umfrageforschung ,Fragebogen ,Library and Information Sciences ,01 natural sciences ,010104 statistics & probability ,0504 sociology ,postalische Befragung ,survey research ,medicine ,Attrition ,0101 mathematics ,Social sciences, sociology, anthropology ,mail survey ,Erhebungstechniken und Analysetechniken der Sozialwissenschaften ,Teilnehmer ,Medical education ,Motivation ,data protection ,Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie ,questionnaire ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,General Social Sciences ,Mail survey ,Datenschutz ,medicine.disease ,Mixed mode ,Computer Science Applications ,mixed-mode ,panel attrition ,self-administered survey ,survey experience ,web survey ,GESIS panel, release v19.0.0 of study number ZA5665 ,Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods ,Self-Administered ,ddc:300 ,Panel ,online survey ,Psychology ,Law ,Web survey ,participant - Abstract
Attrition poses an important challenge for panel surveys. With respect to these surveys, respondents’ decisions about whether to participate in reinterviews are affected by their participation in prior waves of the panel. However, in self-administered mixed-mode panels, the way of experiencing a survey differs between the mail mode and the web mode. Consequently, this study investigated how respondents’ prior experience with the characteristics of a survey—such as length, difficulty, interestingness, sensitivity, and the diversity of the questionnaire—affects their informed decision about whether to participate again or not. We found that the length of a questionnaire seems to be of such importance to respondents that they base their participation on this characteristic, regardless of the mode. Our findings also suggest that the difficulty and diversity of questionnaires are readily accessible information that respondents use in the mail mode when making a decision about whether to participate again, whereas these characteristics have no effect in the web mode. In addition, privacy concerns have an impact in the web mode but not in the mail mode.
- Published
- 2020